


You Promised

by greglet



Category: Star Trek Into Darkness - Fandom, Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies), Star Trek: Into Darkness - Fandom
Genre: M/M, mckirk - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-20
Updated: 2016-05-20
Packaged: 2018-06-09 12:35:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,131
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6907477
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/greglet/pseuds/greglet
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>If Leonard McCoy was called to Engineering instead of Spock in Into Darkness.</p>
            </blockquote>





	You Promised

It wasn’t a journey Leonard would ever remember taking but not just because he was running flat out across the decks, his heart pounding as turbolift after turbolift dropped him further down into the bowels of the ship he had started to call his home. It was a journey he would never remember due to the grief, sorrow, throws of depression and hopelessness that would rain on him if he ever thought back to these moments. Now, as he burst through slowly separating crowds, not noticing that some of them were already grieving, he threw himself into the very heart of the Enterprise to find the worst of his nightmares in front of him.

Crashing down to the wrong side of the radiation chamber door, Jim was already slouched against the edge with the sly smirk Leonard knew all too well, the one that meant Jim had done something risky but this time the smirk didn't meet his starry eyes. Those vicious blues that Leonard would cross the wildest of planets just to glance at were growing visibly dry. It was the first time Leonard saw Jim paying the price of a risk gone this far wrong. 

“Jim?” His voice was shaken and as he tried to reach for him through the glass, his reputable steady hands were trembling with powerless adrenaline. 

“Hey, Bones.” Jim sounded out, his voice muffled from the glass and the loss of energy. Leonard shook his head, his eyes cloudy with pooling tears. He thought to tell Jim not to talk, to save his breath, but the smallest voice that plagued him when Jim’s away missions were just too much to bear asked why. He could feel it, the more Jim was running out of time like sand through his fingers the more the colour was sapping from Leonard. He could feel the blackest confines of the space he was so terrified of leaching on him. 

“What’d you do, Jim?” He was barely above a whisper now as his fingers curled at the glass. Before Jim could answer, Leonard has briefly glanced over his shoulder to bark with a volume he thought he had lost at the Chief Engineer. “ _Scotty, open the damn door_ -” 

“Ah cannae, Doc, it’s a system thing- ah cannae-” The loss was clear in Scotty’s tone and Leonard would’ve heard it had he been listening closely enough. His only response to Scotty was a sorry drop of his shoulders as he tried to choke back a sob. Leonard knew all too well that opening the door would’ve killed the rest of the crew, but what did he care? If Jim was going, he didn’t want to stay. 

“S’okay, Bones, I saved you - and the crew - you’ll be okay.” Jim nodded slowly and Leonard knew that that was Jim’s win in his ‘no-win’ scenario. The crew lived happy and healthy and while Jim was dying, he took that as a win. But, not for Leonard. This was the ultimate no-win. This was the highest price Leonard could even imagine, but this wasn’t his mind playing atrocious tricks on him, this was reality and he could feel it shredding his heart as his hands started to slap against the glass, stopping Jim from letting go. 

“Jim, Jim, don’t - not yet, don’t you dare- Jim Kirk- Jim, don’t you close your eyes-” Despite Leonard’s pleading, Jim’s eyes were fluttering as his hand jittered up to rest, wide and claiming, over Leonard’s pounding heart - had the glass not been in his way. Jim’s lips moved to sound out Leonard’s nickname but his vocal chords found it too stressful to make a noise. A tear dripped to Leonard’s knees. Quickly mirroring Jim’s action and, for the last time, he saw an affectionate glint in Jim’s eye before his hand slipped off the glass and the last glimmer of life left him. 

“Jim?” Leonard asked hopelessly. There was something disconnected between the need he had to urge Jim back to life and the fact he was looking at a lifeless corpse. “Jim?!” He asked a little louder, his left hand still pressed over Jim’s now silent heart. “Jim Kirk, don’t you leave me- you promised me-” His sobs getting louder and more violent as he heaved for breath, slamming a fist against the glass.  
“You promised-” His right hand went to his eyes, trying to wipe away the stream of tears as his left hand slackened from the fist it had made for only a moment before balling again. “ _You promised me five years on this damn ship_ -” 

Leonard raised a tear-streaked hand to slap at the glass as his voice raised to shout something else but all that came was a loud, painful cry. He collapsed under his grief, his hands in his hair as his chest covered his knees in front of the chamber. His sobs were violent as he fought for breath between them and he didn’t look up until Uhura’s gentle hand came to rest on his right shoulder. 

“I can’t leave him, Nyota, I can’t leave him, I can’t-” His head was shaking as tears continued to stream down his face as Uhura had knelt beside him.

“It’s okay, it’s okay, you’re not leaving him.” Her hand stretched over to his left shoulder, pulling him against her as she let the tears she had been holding in go, too.

“I can’t leave him.” She silently shook her head, her gaze fixed on Scotty who was rubbing at his running nose and ignoring his tears. Leonard was lost in his grief with his face tucked into Uhura’s shoulder where they rocked for countless minutes before Leonard grew quiet enough for her to pull away from him. 

“Leonard, Scotty’s going to get some of the chamber engineers to go in and get him, but we can’t be out here when they do, okay?” With a watery eyed nod from the broken man in her arms, she returned his nod and went on. “Then, they’re going to bring him to medical for you.” A fresh stream of tears came from both of them. Uhura was split between the death of her friend and captain but also in complete sympathy of Leonard’s pain, while Leonard just lost the sun in his solar system and was now being faced with a delivery of Jim’s irradiated body to his door. 

Eventually he made it to his feet but there was something obviously deeply wrong. He felt open, wounded, as if someone had thrust their hands into his chest and left him empty and gaping. He was lost, completely lost, and no weight from Uhura at his side with her arm curled over his would shift it. They made no conversation as they made their way through the ship and up to medical, nor did he give anyone a glance. Uhura graciously handed him to Christine with a comforting squeeze of his hand that he loosely returned as she left. 

He found his way to his desk, shut the door behind him and had his head in his hands, sobbing silently before he was sitting. Jim was gone. _Jim_ was gone. Jim who didn’t believe in no-win scenarios had finally risked too much and lost. Leonard’s own sun, his source of natural light on an artificially lit ship, was out and now he was cold, alone and without anything to orbit or be grounded by. He wasn’t a stranger to emotional pain, especially not after his father died. But this was different. This wasn’t just the death of someone close to him, this was the death of part of himself also. 

By the time they had pushed Jim in, Leonard had made it out of his office. At some point he had rolled up his sleeves as if he was subconsciously aware work needed done but he just couldn’t remember how to do it. His knees felt week when the bed rounded the corner and Jim’s golden hair shone like a halo under the neon lights. He wanted to reach out, caress his cheek, stroke his hair and feel the heat under his skin, see those vibrant blues react to close proximity, but instead he just stood there, transfixed on how it looked like Jim was just asleep. 

Jim had been pushed to behind a curtain in the second bay, away from any present patients and Leonard followed dutifully behind. A second wave of grief formed, like a building wave in the stormiest sea, vast, grey, bitingly cold and all consuming as it crashed over him, the numb freeze of a sudden loss filling him to the fingertips. Even with the rolling grief inside, his outward display of a quivering lip, pulled brows and silent tears were the gruesomely grim reminder of how intrinsically linked he was with Jim. He wanted to drop to his knees and let the dull grey ache of grief consume him on the floor, but he moved forward, right behind Jim like he thought he always would be. Even from this far behind the bed Leonard could see that Jim’s skin was uncharacteristically blue, especially around his usually lush lips, his usually gleaming eyes were vacant and the electric blue had lost it’s power source. 

It was after the timeless moments that the engineers in their radiation suits had taken their hands from the trolley, turned on their heels and left when Leonard could only notice the smallest features of Jim as if it was his last seconds to do so. The tiny freckle under his right ear - so small you would never have noticed unless you had been looking at it. Smaller than the full stop at the end of a report, but Leonard couldn’t take his eyes off it - worrying in case it vanished along with the rest of Jim. It just didn’t seem real - it wasn’t happening to him, it wasn’t happening at all… he was sure he would wake up and Jim would be beside him and he’d gasp with the surge of relief in his chest and tell Jim not to ever climb into the warp core, not even to rescue his own crew. Except he still wasn’t waking up and instead of being in bed, safe in his quarters with Jim, he had found himself in a chair with Christine’s sympathetic hand on his shuddering shoulder. 

He could feel the the tears falling off his face, their streaks turning cold in the cool air of the med bay but time felt disjointed, as if nothing was happening as it should, it was all a few seconds out of place. His head felt muddled and clammy and even though he heard voices he couldn’t make out a word they were saying. A shaky hand reached to support his head from drooping any lower while something squeaked by his side. His pulled brows dipped in the confusion. He felt like the small noises should mean something to him, like he should remember what it was for, but trying to pull the memories together for why this sound should make him feel hope was like trying to find something tiny in thick fog. It wasn’t until his watering gaze lifted to the tribble on the desk, not until he saw it move and hop and hear it purr did it all come back to him and then jump forward - this could be replicated 

#

It took too long for Jim’s heart to start beating again. Leonard had almost lost all hope, again, when he started invasive resuscitation. But that small beep on his computer, alongside a sudden burst of positive tones in connection to all the vital organs and systems of Jim’s body had him cursing in relief. The emotion had overcome Leonard so much that he did end up in tears on the floor, grasping at Jim’s loose hand that had slid from the bed. He pressed a kiss to Jim’s cold palm before clasping it between both his hands in an attempt to warm it up while his index finger stretched to the inside of Jim's wrist, keeping a link to his restarted pulse. It was there, loud, thumping and steady but Leonard couldn’t convince himself to let Jim go for the next few hours. 

Jim might not believe in no-win scenarios, but Leonard certainly did. Now, however, he has an exception to the generalisation. Leonard still believed that situations may arise where the worst might happen all over again, however, what Leonard now recognised was his own ability to fight off the frosty fingers of death for Jim Kirk. He knew within himself that he would do this every time. He would always choose Jim and under his watchful eye, Jim wouldn’t make it to the other side without Leonard.


End file.
